Lagos Business School hosted the 2018 Economic and Real Estate Outlook on February 6, 2018 in the school’s Honeywell auditorium.

This year’s event, organised by Fine & Country in conjunction with BusinessDay and LBS, was themed “Navigating Change”. Dr Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, Director of Entrepreneurship Studies, LBS, in her opening speech said “the aim of this programme is to find innovative solutions to the problems of real estate in the economy.”

Mr Frank Aigbogun, Publisher, Business Day, in his presentation said “Electoral Power, a high oil price and a change in how bankers do business would ensure growth in the Nigerian real estate sector”. In her speech, Dr Udo Okonjo, CEO, Fine & Country, mentioned that important segments in real estate which real estate investors ought to look out for are millennial housing, which is housing for the younger, more urban generation, an increase in boutique hotels and themed hotels. “We see that experiential real estate would become a big hit in the real estate sector within the coming years, from healthcare real estate to hotels, the experience people can take away from these places is becoming of importance in this sector,” she said.

The programme featured three panels with various experts in the Real Estate sector sharing in-depth knowledge of the industry and its workings. The first-panel session was themed Real Disruption: Real Estate while the second centred on Creativity in Bridging the Financing Gap and the third was Residential and Commercial Real Estate trends and Opportunities 2018.

During one of the panel sessions, Mr Adeniyi Adeleye, Head, Real Estate Finance, Standard Bank Group said that the financial structures within Nigeria have to be geared towards long-term capital because the real estate industry needs this. “If you are building to sell, your financing has to be different from if you are building to lease, we need to be creative about how revenue is collected.”

Fine & Country’s David Mbah, during another panel session said, “Our challenges from previous years are now opportunities, stakeholders are finding creative ways to tackle the challenges of finance”. Dean, Environmental Studies at the University of Lagos, Timothy Nubi added that “Developers have to diversify their portfolio and go where there is high demand and invest; every location must be probed, we cannot just generalise that every market is doing well, in every problem there is a business opportunity, and as developers we have to put much money in research.”

Dr Henrietta Onwuegbuzie capped the conversation with an insight into the Real Estate opportunities LBS has to offer through the study group – Real Estate Development Series – which would teach participants how to make money and invest better in the sector.

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